Android: Phone crashes when Pandora is casting to Chromecast home group

[blancoYnegro]

Hi guys,

I installed Pandora on my Android phone a few days ago. Whenever I tell it to cast to a Chromecast home group it connects and the group begins playing music. After a couple minutes the application will crash the phone. The home group is already connected to the source so the music will continue to play. However the phone will shutdown and reboot. On restart the phone will be fine as long as I don't launch the Pandora application again. If I open the application it will synchronize with the home group showing the correct state but after a minute or so it will crash the phone again. It works fine in standalone mode. Here are the details:

Phone model: Motorola Edge (2019)

Android Version: 11, Build number: RPDS31.Q4U-39-26-14-13

Pandora version: 2408.1 Installed from Google Play Store

Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you!

Edit: Spoke too soon. The phone will crash and reboot even if I don't restart the application. After reboot, I unlock the phone to allow it to initialize completely. Then lock the phone again. Without any further interaction, about 10 minutes later, the phone crashes again. I noticed that the lock screen was displaying the state of the music being played.

[TannerPandora]

Hi @blancoYnegro 

Welcome to community!

Sorry to hear this is happening. To clarify, does this only happen when casting or will Pandora crash when playing directly from your phone? And when casting does this only happen when using Pandora?

[blancoYnegro]

Hi @TannerPandora,

It seems to only happen when casting. I have not seen Pandora or the phone crash when playing locally from the phone.

Yes, when casting unfound out that if I exit Pandora by swiping it away after the casting has started then the phone will not crash. I can then use the Google home application to control the music on the Chromecast. I have not tried to restart Pandora after that to see what happens. I had not thought of doing this before but I'll try it next time. 

[TannerPandora]

Thanks for the follow up, @blancoYnegro.

I've gone ahead and reported your experience with crashing when casting to our engineering team to further investigate.

If you haven't already you may want to try clearing the app data and cache on your phone. This will help reset the app and re-sync it with Pandora. These steps may be slightly different depending on your model phone but they should be generally correct:

1. Open your device Settings
2. Tap Apps
3. Scroll down to find Pandora
4. Select Storage
5. On the storage details page tap Clear Data.

Let me know if there are any improvements.

[blancoYnegro]

Hi @TannerPandora ,

Thank you for the update. I finally was able to get to this. I cleared the cache and data but had no success. Fingers crossed that there is a possible solution. Thank you.

[AdamPandora]

Thank you for trying that out, @blancoYnegro.

I've updated our engineers with your additional feedback.

We appreciate your patience with this in the meantime.

[Jlandry117 · Accepted solution]

If you're still experiencing this problem, try turning off all notifications for Pandora in the phone app settings.  My phone no longer reboots to the android recovery boot screen when casting to chromecast audio.

[blancoYnegro]

@Jlandry117 

Thanks! You are a life saver, this worked.

@AdamPandora @TannerPandora 

Can't use the Pandora music controls from the notification pane without the notifications but seems like the best we can do for now. Hopefully it points the engineers on the path to solving the cause :).

[Jlandry117]

Glad it helped!  That drove me nuts for the longest time.  I recently decided to try disabling notifications, and sure enough, it worked.  Wish I tried it sooner.

I am currently casting Pandora with only the 'Music Player' notification enabled and so far haven't had the phone crash.  I'm thinking it may only be the 'Cast' notification that causes it.  Maybe this will work for you too and you can get music controls back.

[blancoYnegro]

Thank you again, I have disabled only the Cast notification and that stopped the crash. Coincidentally, my Hulu app was doing the same thing. It has a Cast notification also and after disabling it the phone stopped rebooting as well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.